India to send mission to probe Sun by 2020

NEW DELHI, March 1 (Xinhua) -- India will send a mission to probe the Sun by 2020, local media quoted a top space official as reporting Saturday.

"The Aditya mission to the Sun has been planned between 2017 and 2020. The mission would be around the Earth. A few equipment are being planned for that," the state-owned Indian Space Research Organization's chief K. Radhakrishnan told the media in the southern city of Chennai Friday.

Aditya was planned in 2008 to study the solar corona. This part of the Sun has temperatures of over 1 million degrees, with raging solar winds that reach a velocity of up to 1,000 km a second.

The satellite, which will carry as its payload an advanced solar coronagraph, will weigh just 400 kg. It was initially projected to cost 10 million U.S. dollars, but due to an upgraded mission profile, it is now estimated to cost 20 million U.S. dollars.

It is likely to be placed into a near Earth orbit of 800 km. The mission will study the fundamental problems of coronal heating, and other phenomena that take place in the Earth's magnetosphere.